The Able McLaughlins

by Margaret Wilson

  “It oughtn’t to be. There should be some other way of them being born, without such suffering and pain. With the danger divided between the two. I think——”

  But what she thought was too much for Isobel, who had no patience with those who fussed about the natural things of life.

  “Havers, Libby!” she exclaimed. “How can you say such things!” And, thinking only of herself and the woman before her, she cried passionately,

  “How can you say that it’s the bearing of them that hurts! It’s the evil they do when they’re grown that’s the great pain! We want them to be something great, and they won’t even be decent! Can you share that with anyone?”

  Her words, so poorly aimed, missed their mark, and struck Chirstie. She bowed her head on the back of the chair in front of her. Isobel, returning from seeing Libby away, found her sitting that way, sobbing.

  She began comforting her. Chirstie wasn’t to listen to what that poor daft body said! Why, Auntie Libby scarcely knew what she was saying. No fear of Chirstie dying. She was doing fine! And well as a woman ever was. But Chirstie couldn’t stop crying. She sobbed a long time.

  Isobel was putting cobs into the fire when at last Chirstie lifted her red face from her arms, and sat erect, trying to speak.

  “I don’t care! I might die! I’m going to tell you something!” And she fell to crying again.

  Isobel came and stood over her. A fierce hope gleamed uncertainly for a moment in her mind, and went out again.

  “What you going to tell me, Chirstie?” she asked kindly.

  “If ever you tell I told you, I suppose you’ll break up everything between us!” she sobbed. “I don’t know what Wully’ll do if he finds it out, Maybe he won’t have me! Maybe he’ll turn me out!”

  Her excitement excited Isobel. Chirstie wasn’t just hysterical, she saw.

  “You needn’t fear I’ll tell!” she exclaimed loftily. “I don’t go about telling secrets!”

  “Oh, it would never be the same between us again if he finds out I told you!”

  “He’ll never find out from me!”

  Then Chirstie sat up, sobbing heroically.

  “You needn’t say Wully’s doing evil! He isn’t! He couldn’t! This isn’t any fault of his! It isn’t his disgrace!”

  “I never supposed it was his fault!” said his mother.

  Chirstie never heeded the insinuation.

  “I mean—it isn’t his! It isn’t his baby!”

  Years might have been seen falling away from Isobel McLaughlin. She sat down slowly on the chair against which Chirstie was leaning. She could scarcely find her voice.

  “Are you telling me it’s not Wully’s wee’un?” she asked at length.

  “It’s not Wully’s!”

  Bewildered she asked;

  “Whose is it?”

  “I can’t tell you that. It’s not his.”

  “And you let us think it was!”

  “Oh, mother, I couldn’t help it! Oh, I didn’t know what to do! And he just did whatever he wanted to. He has everything his own way! He wouldn’t let me tell you! Every day I’ve told him he ought to tell you. But he wouldn’t, mother. And if he finds out I have told you, he might even— Oh, I don’t know what he’ll do!” She sobbed passionately.

  Isobel put out her hand and began stroking her hair.

  “He’ll never find it out from me! Oh, I canna sense it!” she cried. “What ever made him do it?”

  “He did it to help me, mother! To help me out! Oh, I wanted him to tell you before we were married. It just seemed as if I couldn’t marry him without telling you. But he didn’t want anyone to know he wasn’t—like me! He says——”

  “What does he say, Chirstie?”

  “He says he doesn’t want anyone to know it isn’t his! He doesn’t want them to know about—the other one! Mother, I’ll make this right some time! You trust me! Some day I’m going to tell how good he is!”

  Isobel began kissing her.

  “Oh, Chirstie! Oh, you did well to tell me. You needn’t fear I’ll ever let him know! His own mother! This is the best day of my life, Chirstie!” She rose, and began walking about the house in her excitement, unable to contain her delight. “He never was an ill child, Chirstie! He wanted to help you out, I see. There never was one of the boys as good as Wully, and so gentle-like.” She began poking the fire, not realizing what she did. “He’ll never know you told me. Don’t you cry! I knew he was good. I never believed that story of his! It wasn’t like him to do such a thing! It was like him to help you!” She went to the door presently, and called in the children who were playing outside, and when they came in, she took little Sarah passionately up in her arms. “Your mother’s young again!” she cried to the surprised child. “Young again!” She gave them both cookies. She comforted Chirstie, stopping in her turns about the room to stroke her hair. She sang snatches of Psalms. “He was never an ill child!” she kept repeating. She began making tea for the girl’s refreshment. She looked out of the window. She clasped and unclasped her hands excitedly. She shone.

  An hour later John McLaughlin drove into the yard with a load of wood, and Wully was with him. Isobel threw a shawl over her head, and went out through the winter nightfall to meet them.

  “Aunt Libby’s been here, Wully, talking to Chirstie about Flora till she’s having a great cry. You needn’t be frightened. She’s lying on the bed, but there’s nothing wrong with her.”

  Then, as Wully started hastily for the house, she drew close to her husband. He had begun to unhitch his horses. She said;

  “John!”

  At the sound of her voice he turned startled towards her. “What ails you?” he had begun to ask, but she was saying;

  “Yon’s no child of Wully’s!”

  His hands fell from the horse’s side.

  “I kent it all the time!” she cried triumphantly.

  “No child of Wully’s?” he repeated.

  “He never done it. I said so all the time! Now she’s told me herself!”

  He peered at her through the blue half-darkness that rose from the snow.

  “Not his! God be thankit! Whosever is it?”

  “It’s Peter Keith’s. Whose would it be, and her in Libby’s house half the winter? And Peter running away the very day they were married! Libby’s that slack, thinking him such an angel!”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “She did not. But I kent it! Did I not say Wully never did so ill a thing?”

  “You did not!”

  “It was a grand thing for him to do. But I can’t think what possessed him ever to take all that blame on us!”

  “Can you not?” meditated her husband.

  “She says he doesn’t want folks to know it isn’t his.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Why wouldn’t he, indeed? Would he be wanting to disgrace us all?”

  “He wouldn’t want folks to know Peter had her. That’s but natural.”

  “It’s but natural I shouldn’t want folks to think he’d shamed Jeannie’s Chirstie.”

  “So it is,” he agreed. “The thing looked well to the Lord, I’m thinking,” he added.

  “I wish it looked better to the neighbors,” she retorted. “This is a strange thing, John.” She gave a sore sigh. “Libby grieving herself daft about that gomeril a’ready, so that we won’t can say a word to anybody till he’s found. Any more sorrow’d kill her. But when he comes back, I’ll have her tell the whole thing. She says she’s been wanting to clear Wully! She’s a good girl, John. But we’ll have just to bide our time. I’m glad I’ve no son like that lad Peter!”

  She had had to forget how he had sacrificed her pride for that girl. She had to idealize her son again. She could see that he had done a generous thing. And she would see that the world saw that. She could run to meet Jeannie, now, across the floor of heaven, unashamed. Her husband stood enjoying her face. He said;

  “It’s early for boasting, woman. You’d best w
ait twenty years!”

  “Little I fear twenty years!” she retorted. A light shone down the path from the house. Wully had opened the door, and shut it, and was coming towards them. She wished she could take him up in her arms and cuddle him against her neck, kissing him as she had done in her youth. She said quietly to him;

  “You needn’t worry. It’s only Auntie Libby that’s upset her. There’s nothing ails her.”

  He said anxiously;

  “Honestly, mother?”

  Wonder welled up within her as she looked at him. There he stood before her, demanding honesty of her, while for months he had been lying great fundamental lies about her very life, which was his honor. “Honestly?” indeed! But there he was before her, beautiful and unrealized, risen to new life in her great expectations for him. She said only;

  “Honestly! There’s nothing wrang!”

  CHAPTER X

  BARBARA MCNAIR had watched Wully and Chirstie driving away towards Wully’s home that afternoon after her arrival at the sty in the slough. It was raining then, and it rained for nearly six weeks. She stood looking after them till they were out of sight. Then she went to the other little window. There she shut her lips tightly—regarded what her eyes discovered, two bony cows, shivering, it seemed to her, in the blown rain, trying to find shelter from the wind by huddling against the haystack that was one side of the barn. The rain was gray and sullen, the prairies sodden and brown; the cows had trampled the ground between the house and the barn into mud, into which they sank knee deep. She stood contemplating. The rain continued blowing about in imprisoning drab veils. Finally she turned away, and sat down weakly. From where she sat, she saw the dripping cows shivering. She sat huddled down. She seemed trying to cuddle up against herself. Her hands, folded in her lap, seemed the only sight not terrifying that her eyes might consider.

  Presently the silence of the room was broken with a little sob. She looked up. Chirstie’s little sister, standing near the window, was just turning away from it. She had been trying to see something of Chirstie. She felt deserted. Big tears were running slowly down her face. She looked like a neglected, ragged, little heartbroken waif.

  Barbara started from her chair. That moment her face showed she had forgotten the surrounding desolations. She ran and gathered the child into her arms. She sat down with her in her lap. The little Jeannie, finding herself caressed, began crying lustily. The new mother kissed her. She caressed her. She soothed her, coaxing her into quietness. She told her little stories. She sang little songs, examining thoughtfully the poor little garments she wore. Dusk came upon them as they sat consoling one another. Barbara demanded help then of the child. Jeannie must show her where all the things were kept which were needed for the supper. They would make some little cakes together. Jeannie grew important and happy.

  Dod’s eyes fairly bulged with amazement when he saw that supper table. Nothing of the sort had been set before him in that kitchen. His new mother made no apologies. She had been thinking to herself that it had been food of the most primitive sort had been set before her by Chirstie on the three occasions upon which they had sat down to eat since she had arrived; doubtless Chirstie wasn’t feeling very well, and she was at best but a young housekeeper, whose omissions one could easily overlook. Barbara was pleased with what she had managed to prepare on the strange stove and in the newfangled oven. She saw her husband scowling at the table.

  “I dinna like so many cakes!” he remarked severely. One must begin with these women at once, he seemed to be thinking. He had forgotten apparently that his bride came from the very land of cakes, though he wasn’t to be allowed to forget it often in the future.

  She said apologetically;

  “They’re not so good, I doubt. I couldn’t find any currants in the house. When we get currants you’ll like them fine.”

  “There’s too much in them now!” he declared bravely. “We don’t have cake every day.”

  “I do,” she said placidly. “I like a wee cake with my tea.”

  Alex McNair was not entirely a stingy man—not the most stingy man in the neighborhood. He wasn’t like Andy McFee, for example, who was so careful of expenditure that when his corn got a little high in the summer he always took off his shirt and hoed the weeds in his skin, to save the wear of the cloth; and who persisted in habits of frugality so that, in his old age, when he rode about in his grandson’s Pierce-Arrow, he removed his shoes upon seating himself, to save them from harm, and persisted in this till an able granddaughter-in-law urged him not to misuse shoe-strings with such extravagance. Nor was he like the elder John McKnight, who when he went to mill always took with him a hen tied in a little basket, to eat the oats that fell from his horse’s mid-day feeding. McNair thought such extremes foolish. He even laughed at McKnight’s device. How much easier it was simply to gather the oats up by hand, as he did, dust and all, and to take them home for the hens in his pocket. By this plan the oats were saved, and the hen had a whole day at home to convert useless angleworms into salable eggs. He was not, this proves, an entirely stingy man, yet—the idea of cakes like those for just a common supper! He would have to show that woman his disapproval, his disgust, his sharp pain at such extravagance.

  He did his best then, and in the days that followed, to impress her. But she was difficult. She never lifted her voice in perturbation, and she never heeded a word he said. When the howling of the wind woke him up at night, he would hear her sighing, “It’s still raining!” When she looked shrinkingly out of the window in the morning, she murmured, “It’s still at it!” When he came in for dinner, she would ask, “Does it never stop?” At supper she sighed, like a weary child, “ ’Tis a fine land, this!”—for all the world as if he was to blame for the weather. She had been housekeeping for him but two days, when he pointed out the woodpile to her. “Bring the wood into the house,” she said, as if that was a man’s task. “I don’t like going out in the rain.” “The rain’ll not hurt you,” he assured her, going about his work. When he came in at noon, the fire was out the room was cold, and she and the little girl were asleep and comfortable in bed. “I don’t like going out in the wet,” she repeated simply, as if she had done nothing outrageous in defying him. He had to wait for dinner till the wood was brought in, and dried, and the fire made. The next day she refused, in the same passive, happy way, to bring water from the slough well. She simply remarked she wouldn’t think of going so far in the mud, and waited till he brought the water. He never knew that she had hidden enough water for thirsty hours in a jug under the bed, and was prepared to stand a long siege. And then his boots were to be tallowed and dried near the fire. His wife Jeannie had always tallowed his boots. The new wife looked mildly surprised that he should have expected such a duty from her, and left the boots standing, muddy and soaked, just where they were, till he was driven to caring for them himself. And she kept asking him hour by hour, mildly, when he was going to town for her other boxes. She asked him so often, so kindly, that he was forced in despair to attempt the journey through the rain, thinking that maybe if she had something to sew, she would cease making cakes by the hour. And when he started, she gave him a great list of groceries to bring back, and ordered more sugar than his family ate in years. He growled at this—just growled. There had been enough sugar in the house when she came to last till spring. They could not use sugar as if it were water! Why not? she asked, simply. Wasn’t he a great lord, with acres? She liked sugar.

  He brought back with him only a little sugar, and most of it the coarse brown kind, and a jug of sorghum which was to last till spring. She fell upon her boxes eagerly, and adorned the sty amazingly with rich looking things which never really seemed at home there. She made a new dress for her little stepdaughter at once, and set about making Chirstie’s baby a robe. She seemed almost to have resigned herself to the deluge. She spoke with gayety about her ark to the children, and told them to keep their eyes open for the dove. And then, just when she seemed to be getting settled,
the winter set in.

  Rains she had seen, and could understand, and snows, tab, in moderate fashion. But snow like this, continuing; winds like these, whirling darkening wild clouds of whiteness to burst against windows and doors, rocking the little sty as if it were an insecure cradle—winds with horror howling in them, howling all night through the shaken darkness, triumphant, unconquerable winds against which no life could stand—she had never imagined anything like them. She had never before risen in the morning to find doors drifted tight shut, windows banked with white. She had never seen men burrow out of windows to dig open their doors, and tunnel a way to their barns. The well was as distant as if it had been in Patagonia. The newborn calf froze in the barn with its first breath. The men’s ears froze, their hands froze, their feet froze. Everything in the house froze solid. The bread had to be thawed out in a steamer over a kettle before they could get a bite to eat in the morning. The milk had to be pounded into little bits and melted. The cold—its intensity, its cruelty, staggered her.

  Her work would be done early in the morning, while the men were yet melting snow at the stove to water their beasts—that is, all the work she chose to do. To conquer those long, dark hours she worked away on the baby dress. When it was all finished—alas, too soon for one having endless time to beguile—she looked at it with satisfaction. She had made every stitch of it by hand. It was a yard and a half long, with seven clusters of seven tiny tucks around the skirt, with hand embroidery between some of the rows, and darned net between others. It was ruffled and shirred, and smocked and featherstitched and hemstitched, eyeleted and piped and gathered. And a tiny darned net bonnet, which went with it, was worthy of it. It had taken many weeks to complete it. And always when her eyes were worn by the fine stitching in the flickering candle light, she made cakes, for a change, sparing white sugar with noble economy, using only brown sugar, whatever eggs were unfrozen, fresh butter, and thick cream, and raisins and currants while they lasted.